More a jazz musician of ideas than a great pianist or composer, Dave Brubeck took his experimental, heavily European-influenced jazz to massive, mainly white, middle-class audiences in the 1950s and 1960s, and they loved it. Brubeck is perhaps most popularly known for the catchy “Take Five”— the first jazz single to sell more than a million copies.
Born on December 6, 1920, in Concord, California, Brubeck studied the classical piano with lessons from his mother, but by the age of 13 he was already performing professionally with local jazz groups. He continued his music studies at the College of the Pacific, and while in the military during World War II he played in the band assigned to General George Patton’s 3rd Army. After the war he returned to California to continue his studies at Mills College in Oakland. There he came under the influence of composition teacher Darius MILHAUD, whose own work integrated elements of jazz and world music.
While at Mills, Brubeck formed an octet with fellow students, including drummer Cal Tjader (1925–82), saxophonist Paul Desmond (1924–77), clarinettist Bill Smith (b. 1926), and bassist Ron Crotty (b. 1929). In the late 1940s, their approach to jazz—in which a classical-influenced style was modernised by polytonality and polyrhythms—was strongly indebted to Milhaud, and was a little too far ahead of its time to gain the attention of jazz fans besotted with swing and bebop.
In 1951, Brubeck and Desmond formed their own quartet. The new group featured Brubeck’s avant-garde, harmonically complex piano and Desmond’s laid-back, airy alto, but the quartet’s drum and bass chairs changed repeatedly until the late 1950s and early 1960s, when Joe Morello (b. 1928) and Eugene Wright (b. 1923) joined. This proved to be the group’s most popular period. The quartet’s somewhat erudite style set them apart from most bebop, hard bop, and cool jazz ensembles, and introduced the classical-jazz hybrid that was labelled “third stream” by writer and composer Gunther Schuller. Their tours of college campuses, along with their thematic recordings (for example, the album Jazz Impressions of Eurasia) were popular with classical and other audiences who were intimidated by the rougher side of jazz.
The 1959 album Time Out marked the height of their success. The album had the further distinction of initiating many listeners to a composition not in the standard jazz time signatures of 4/4 or 2/4, or even in the less familiar 3/4 and 6/8: “Take Five,” which was written by Desmond, is in 5/4, which adds an extra, unforgettable beat to each measure. The album also reaffirmed Brubeck’s classical foundation with another hit, “Blue Rondo à la Turk,” a rhythmically tricky reworking of Mozart’s “Turkish Rondo” in 9/8.
The Dave Brubeck Quartet broke up in 1967 but several members, including baritone saxophonist Gerry MULLIGAN, who succeeded Desmond, tenor Jerry Bergonzi, and clarinettist Bill Smith (from the original Mills College octet) performed intermittently with Brubeck’s later groups. Starting in the 1970s, the core of these later groups was made up of Brubeck’s sons: keyboard player Darius (b. 1947), trombonist and electric bass guitarist Chris (b. 1952), drummer Danny (b. 1955), and cellist Matthew (b. 1955). Their repertoire continues to feature an interesting mix of Brubeck hits, a seemingly inexhaustible supply of new compositions, jazz standards, and popular tunes, all performed with characteristic musical sophistication and impressive technique.
Jeff Kaliss
SEE ALSO:
EUROPEAN JAZZ; FREE JAZZ; JAZZ.
FURTHER READING
Brubeck, Dave. “Jazz Evolvement as Art Form” (Down Beat, vol. xvii, No. 1, 1950); Hall, Fred. It’s About Time: The Dave Brubeck Story (Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 1996); Storb, Use, and Klaus-G. Fischer. Dave Brubeck: Improvisations and Compositions: The Idea of Cultural Exchange (New York: P. Lang, 1994).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Jazz at Oberlin-, Jazz Impressions of Eurasia; Time Out.